Hi. I need to generate a html table from this xml structure(very simplified for the example):

<Row>
  <Cell>
    <Text>Hello</Text>
    <colspan>2</colspan>
  </Cell>
  <Cell>
    <Text>World</Text>
  </Cell>
</Row>
more Row(s) here
.
.
.

this should be transformed into something like:
<table>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">Hello</td>
</tr>
more TR(s) here
.
.
.
notice that the 'World' cell should not appear because of the colspan.
The first level element Row represent each row (tr), and the second level element Cell represent each cell (td). So, THE PROBLEM IS: when I have a colspan=2 in one cell I don't have to convert the next Cell element into another td; and if I have a colspan=n I have to avoid converting the next n-1 Cell elements to td tags.
I can't change the xml structure to avoid sending Cell elements for cells that are not going to be visible. Nowadays I'm parsing this with two nested for-each, but the problem is that I'm always inserting more td than the required when one of the Cell come with colspan set. I can't reassign variables, so I can't keep a count of how many Cell elements should I avoid next.
I'm looking for an idea, a hint, anything that helps me to transform this XML in this way (I know it would be much easier if the cell that should not appear doesn't have an associated Cell element, but I can't change this!!!)
I would really appreciate any help.
Thanks,

Federico

Looks to me as if you need something like this:

<xsl:template match="Row">
 <tr>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="Cell"/>
 </tr>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="Cell">
  <xsl:variable name="latestColspan" select="preceding-sibling::Cell[@colspan][1]"/>
  <xsl:if test="not($latestColspan and count($latestColspan/preceding-sibling::Cell + $latestColspan/@colspan) &gt; count(current()/preceding-sibling::Cell))">
  <td>
    <xsl:copy-of select="@colspan"/>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </td>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

As always, the answer is to stop thinking algorithmically, and try to think of the output as a function of the input: "how can I decide by looking at the input whether the current cell should be output or not?"



Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference